2 days weak: my dad

the summation of wednesday's events. sleep deprivation. brutal, hideous & in my case, mostly driven by my neuroses & stress. & the bottom line as to why i'm 2 days weak.

let's break down the triumvirate, shall we? work? sucks. state of the heart? sucks (but today on the mend).

but family? my dad? to say this whole situation sucks is the understatement of the millennium.

after the emotional bomb went off in my home on weds  - while i tried to recover myself & desperately grasp at ever-elusive sleep with my mind spinning & my hair on fire - at oh-dark-thirty in the am, my brother called. something horrible was going on w/ my father.

wait a sec. rewind for a moment. fill in the blanks.

the painful backstory to the recent events i'll describe is that my father is having a recurrence of his brain cancer. this time the tumor is inoperable, inadvisable to radiate or to utilize chemo therapy. essentially this is the beginning of the end. and for the last couple of months, i've been back & forth to sf watching my father become a shell of his former self. yet never knowing how much time we have left.

a week & a half ago, he went to the ucsf emergency room, experiencing unbearable pain in his gut & was subsequently admitted to the hospital for pancreatitis & an pseudo-paralysis of his large & small intestines. luckily, i had already scheduled a visit & was able to be with him over that weekend while he was being watched over by nurses, doctors, pca's...

after i left sf, just this tuesday, they moved him to a rehabilitation facility, st. mary's. not my fave institution but ucsf does not have a rehab facility & dad needed to start rebuilding his strength. all that said, it seemed like all these steps were moving dad in the right direction.

so back to weds nite. recap: hell day on hell account + the heartache of realizing i was so wrong about a situation with someone i care about so deeply + desperate attempt to fall asleep + brain/hair on fire... so it was late. brother calls. something awful with dad.

it's hard to even recall the full content of the next 2 hours of the middle of the night on the phone w/ my brother & sister-in-law. unable to reach my mother. my brother on the phone, trying to explain what's going on, my sister-in-law getting on the phone, clarifying medically what my brother was telling me. dad's blood-pressure through the floor. dehydrated, maybe? dangerous infection, maybe? bottom line, he's not ok, he's crashing.

can't stop crying, much less think straight (although, for levity's sake, it's not easy for a lezzie to think straight). i'm texting ames, who has been my west coast rock through all of this, but we keep missing each other. where is my sanity?

do i get on a plane? why can't i reach mom? is he going to die & i won't be there to hold his hand & kiss his forehead & tell him it's going to be ok, that i love him & to be free of all this agony?

fucking turmoil.

my sister-in-law (a doctor, btw) tells me that my original plan to fly out in 3 weeks isn't going to work, that i need to be on standby. & that they'll call me when we know more.

i crawl into bed. try to relax. mom finally calls, tells me that st. mary's had a paperwork glitch & never gave him his steroids. hello!!! so they were going to start his dosage back up & to hang tight, that she'd call me thurs & give me an update & to try to rest. yeah, it's almost 4am.

i emailed my key people at work to let them know the scenario & also that i needed to sleep in a bit.

thursday. i'm a wreck. construction in building. no sleep. hating work. hating my heart. hating my family sitch. just hating it.

can't reach mom all day. haven't spoken to my father which is slaying me. can't reach my sister-in-law. texted w/ bro. no news. i'm in a haze. trying not to cry. workload is a blur. amelia gadala meets me mid-day to talk me off the ledge, praise the little baby geezus & i miraculously make it through the day without a full blown meltdown. though i do think i might be going mad.

i finally hear from my sister-in-law & she says dad's on the mend but there is some pneumonia in his lungs. but things are a wee bit better. i try to rest, bail on all plans, but i'm too tired to sleep. they say life isn't fair.

fast forward to today. still in a slight fog but functioning. blogging my ass off to get all this shite out of my head & working somewhat half-heartedly, yet running interference all over the place. then i finally hear from mom. dad's doing great. totally improving. my sister-in-law is wrong. just come out in 3 weeks, as planned. everything is fine.

fine. my mom - the woman who for a month straight tells me regularly that dad is dying, he's dying, he's dying, dying - sounds like a fucking stepford wife. but i'm just going to take "fine" to the bank & make a deposit & try to relax.

am about to go see my rockin therapist, who i lovingly call "yoda". the blog is an outlet & she is an outlet. & then i'll see gio for a few... he's an outlet. maybe with all these outlets, and perhaps some xanax, i'll sleep tonight.

and my work drama, my injured but healing heart, and my soul completely full of my father will all take a breather. so i can become maybe 1 day strong.

xoxo